


As the World Comes to An End

by oldvoiceholdingmeback (tryingtofallbehind)



Category: Inception
Genre: AU, Illnesses, M/M, doctor!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-05
Updated: 2013-04-05
Packaged: 2017-12-07 12:44:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/748647
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryingtofallbehind/pseuds/oldvoiceholdingmeback
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eames' journey into medicine may have started with the kids, but it ended with Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As the World Comes to An End

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, etc. Title is a lyric from "King and Lionheart" by Of Monsters and Men. Also, I have a limited knowledge of medical systems and medical school, but I tried to be as accurate as possible. I kept the disease purposefully vague because I didn't want to misrepresent any person with a certain disease. Also, this was written quickly and un-beta'd and doesn't really make much sense to me? But I like it anyways so here you are.

If Eames were completely honest, he would admit that he had never imagined himself applying to medical school, or even tackling the amount of chemistry that it required, let alone actually getting in. 

For him, originally of course, it was the kids.

He should have known it was going to be the kids, way back when he volunteered to be an elf for Santa in the pediatric surgery ward in his freshman year. He was a sucker for kids under normal circumstances, but the gaunt faces and wide eyes that stared up at him as if he could actually bring them the world melted him, and it was like everything clicked, right there.

It broke his heart, though, when they asked Santa to make them better, to let them go home, to repair their families torn apart by illness.

**

If it started with those kids, it ended with Arthur.

Arthur was 17 when Eames was in the winter of his junior year, shadowing Arthur’s pediatric surgeon. In truth, Eames had been shadowing Dr. Miles for months, but he met Arthur then, February bright and cold and it seemed fitting, for how pale Arthur was.

“Some kind of gene mutation disease thing,” Arthur supplied as Eames stared (which, wasn't much of an answer at all). “A fairly nasty version, too, from what I’ve been told.”

“Arthur here has been with me since he was, what, four?” Dr. Miles smiled fondly. “His disease is a particular interest area of mine, even when many of the cases are not surgical.”

“But I am,” Arthur interjected. “It’s why I’m his favorite patient. I’m the most interesting.” Eames smiled awkwardly, not knowing what to say around this gangly teenager, clearly informed about his reality and not afraid. Arthur started for him, “Are you another med student looking for an in? That last one didn’t make it a week.”

Dr. Miles laughed, “No, Eames is just a hopeful, he’s still in undergrad. What’s your major again?”

“Political science, with minors in biology, medical anthropology, and Latin,” Eames said awkwardly. 

“Aren’t you just the overachiever,” Arthur said sarcastically. 

“Don’t let Arthur’s frail appearance fool you, Eames, he’s as smart as they come,” Dr. Miles said proudly. “He’s graduating in the spring, a full year only, with more AP credits than he can do anything with, honestly.”

“You know very well the AP tests are in April, so I don’t have them yet,” Arthur chided.

“He’ll be taking classes at the university next fall,” Dr. Miles continued, and Eames finally realized, Arthur wasn’t just any patient to Dr. Miles. And Eames wasn’t going to treat him like one either, not from the way Arthur grinned, ducking his head to hide his dimples, still so young.

Arthur doesn’t spend more than a month at a time out of the hospital in the next four years.

**

Eames finds himself in his third year of med school and it’s scary, doing his clinical rotations and having less time to visit Arthur and it’s worse, especially when his advisor tells him he should really try a rotation at another school, another hospital, since he’s never left, didn’t even move to a different school after undergrad. 

He wanted to stay there for residency too, and his advisor once again pushed the paperwork for a rotation across the state when he mentioned it.

But- Arthur needs a lung transplant.

He’s been on the waiting list, right at the top of the waiting list, for over six months now and Eames had promised him that he’d be there when the call finally came in. He had his sick days saved up, Arthur was the closest thing Eames had to family in the states- along with Dr. Miles- and it would be nothing short of an emergency when lungs arrived.

Eames couldn’t spend weeks away from the hospital, he couldn’t.

**

It was fair to say that Dr. Miles took Eames under his wing. His daughter- Mallorie Cobb- was an admissions officer for the medical school and Miles set up weekly meetings for Eames with her, coffee to discuss what would better his chances getting in.

He also had Eames shadow his son-in-law, Dom Cobb, who was a brilliant neurosurgeon, if a little too confident at times (but, then again, what surgeon wasn’t?).

He always came back to Miles at the end of the day and, more specifically, to Arthur.

They had struck up a friendship of sorts somewhere along the way. Arthur wasn’t well enough in the fall to begin taking classes like he’d planned, but Eames brought him in his old textbooks on any subject that Arthur found interesting, which, turned out to be everything. He even took Eames’ chemistry books, which, despite needing more chemistry than almost anything else for medical school, he hated.

Eames wondered what Arthur would have chosen to go to school for.

Eames, for one, thinks that Arthur would make a fantastic lawyer. Eames thought of it for himself, originally had planned on it, until he had stumbled into volunteering at the hospital. 

Then again, Eames could see Arthur getting a PhD in something, and becoming some sort of renowned professor. He’d be good at economics. He’d win a Nobel Prize for it, probably. Arthur seemed like the type.

Honestly, Eames was pretty sure Arthur would be good at anything.

“I think I would have gone into the military,” Arthur says one day, when Eames mentions something in passing. “If I weren’t so- if I weren’t sick. I would’ve liked the structure. Also, it would pay for my schooling. I wouldn’t even have been able to apply to colleges had Miles not taken me in.”

Eames never asked about Arthur’s parents, but he eventually got the gist of what had happened. Arthur had been Miles’ patient for almost ten years when Arthur’s parents were killed in a car crash, along with his older brother, and Arthur didn’t have any other family. Miles took him in, adopting him for all intents and purposes, except officially. 

Eames doesn’t know why he becomes attached to Arthur, but maybe all that matters is that Arthur became attached too.

**

When Eames comes to tell Arthur he’ll be leaving for six or more weeks, he finds Ariadne in the room with him. Ariadne is cancer patient, now in remission, and she befriended Arthur when they were waiting for CT scans or something. Ariadne was the only person that Eames had seen with Arthur who could match his wit as well as Eames could.

Luckily Eames didn’t have to be jealous, not when Ariadne got coffee every other day with Yusuf, the surgical nurse that Dom Cobb hoarded as if Yusuf belonged to him. 

Not that Eames had any right to be jealous.

He and Arthur had never discussed what was between them, even though there had been things, whispered confessions and gripped wrists. Long hours in the waiting room for Eames and Arthur’s shaking hands as he opened Eames’ decision letters for medical school.

Eames had tried bringing it up before, but Arthur had always cut him off, changing the subject. 

Eames thought the problem was that Arthur didn’t think he’d survive his disease.

And- Arthur did need that lung transplant. But Eames wished that he could enjoy what was between them anyways.

Arthur’s small smile at Eames’ presence barely wavers when Eames tells him that he has to go elsewhere. Which didn’t surprise Eames at all, Arthur was always encouraging him.

Eames makes sure to give Miles a bunch of books to sporadically hand off to Arthur, to remind him that Eames is thinking of him.

**

The lungs come through while Eames is gone.

Eames doesn’t even get a text about it.

And when he finally returns to the hospital for his next rotation, Arthur is gone from the hospital.

Eames is nothing short of livid.

**

Arthur appears a few weeks after that, sheepish, and sitting at Eames’ regular table, with a stack of books in front of him. Eames doesn’t want to sit across from him, but he can’t resist, he could never resist Arthur.

Eames sits, not saying a word, but Arthur reached out and grasped his hand, rubbing a thumb over his knuckles. Eames’ shoulders relax and he grips back, and Arthur smiles, wide and bright and relief shining in his eyes.

**

Arthur sits in the back at Eames’ medical school graduation, whistling loudly as Eames’ name was called and Eames had never been happier.

(Arthur double-majored in Linguistics and French and Francophone studies. Eames didn’t know what it meant to be filled with pride until he saw Arthur get his diploma.)

(Arthur is finishes his grad degree just as Eames finishes residency. They celebrate by moving across the country to a new city, a new university for Arthur and a new hospital for Eames.)

(Their dog is named Nietzsche, and Arthur is constantly kicking him out of their bed. Eames doesn’t complain, because Arthur is convinced that if he glues himself to Eames, hugging him closer than before, Nietzsche won’t return.)

(Eames might have trained him to do that.)

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: oldvoiceholdingmeback.tumblr.com


End file.
